


between the two there's only blood and whiskey

by brinnanza



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gratuitous ocean metaphors, Introspection, Prague Arc, this is just zolf has a lot of feelings whilst alone and drunk in a prague hotel room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22995937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinnanza/pseuds/brinnanza
Summary: Zolf stares up at the cracked and pitted ceiling of his cheap tavern room and everything spins on the back of a great deal of cheap whiskey. Too much whiskey, probably. He’d wanted to be well on his way to passed out by the time the bar downstairs closed, but by some combination of dwarvish constitution and the universe’s cruel sense of humor, neither sleep nor unconsciousness will come.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	between the two there's only blood and whiskey

**Author's Note:**

> listen this is basically a several days later follow up to [there's nothing here but fear and death](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22339990) aka the post mr ceiling zolf angst. this is the post airship zolf angst, so naturally I just snagged the next lyric of the mechs' blood and whiskey for the title of this one. thanks to charlie (crimes variant) for looking this over for me, and thanks to the rogers for being lovely and encouraging.

Zolf stares up at the cracked and pitted ceiling of his cheap tavern room and everything spins on the back of a great deal of cheap whiskey. Too much whiskey, probably. He’d wanted to be well on his way to passed out by the time the bar downstairs closed, but by some combination of dwarvish constitution and the universe’s cruel sense of humor, neither sleep nor unconsciousness will come.

It’s not oblivion he’s chasing anyway, not really. He’d just wanted to get out of his own head for a while, stop thinking about the broken world and its broken gods, the shattered remains of everything he’d ever thought he’d known to be true.

He thought he’d known, once upon a time, how the world worked. Knew, on some level, what was true and just. Life’s not fair, but if you fought, you could make it a little _more_ fair. Some things are good and some things are evil, objectively, a tangible line that divine connection made explicit. The Meritocrats are just. The Smiths are miners. Gods are unimpeachable higher powers. 

Now Zolf’s not sure anything is true. That anything _can_ be true.

What Zolf knows now is this: The world is broken, and it still spins on. Nothing makes sense, but everything still spins on.

He follows the lines of the cracks in the ceiling with his eyes, and he spins too, inside and out. Thoughts swirl idly through the haze of alcohol, vague recriminations that echo off of the empty spaces of him and multiply into cacophony. 

He knows, with whatever amount of certainty he is still capable of, that it was only the cool press of a metal barrel to his forehead, the stark reminder of his own mortality, that stayed his hand aboard the airship. He’d have killed Bertie, sent him plunging to certain death, and yet, Zolf still can’t quite find it in himself to regret his actions, not entirely. Part of him still wishes that he’d succeeded, that he’d improved the world by ridding it of Bertie.

Zolf is just… tired. Rage had been easy. It had been something different, burning right through all the despair and hopelessness and guilt until there was nothing left but red and fury. Even now, drunk and dozing, he knows there is a well of it inside him, that it could rise up like the tide and swallow him. That he could give himself over to it, let it sweep him out to sea and be lost with it. It would be… simpler.

But nothing is simple anymore, not since they broke the world and shattered every comforting illusion Zolf had ever held. He likes to think himself a practical man, guided by pragmatism. He could draw a clear line from the mines to the sea to London to his little band of mercenaries.

It was only ever supposed to be a job, a way to remember how to live on land again. But against his will, he cares for Hamid and Sasha, cares for them both so deeply that they are a part of him, like they have each twined themselves around the very bones of him, and cutting them away will rend him to ribbons.

It was the right decision, though, to leave them. The only decision, really. He is broken, irrevocably, too many fine cracks spider-webbing every inch of him. When he inevitably shatters again, into rage, into grief, he knows beyond all doubt it would only have dragged them down with him, to whatever depth he plunges. He’d already gotten Sasha killed once, and Hamid…. Well, it was probably only a matter of time.

He just breaks everything he touches. Maybe he always has, from the first moment he’d followed Feryn into the mines. He’d run away from the splintered pieces of his own family, choking down guilt, and kept running. He’d thought maybe Poseidon could help him fix something, if not his own soul than at least the bodies of his shipmates, but that too had only led to destruction.

The other clerics, in Dover, at sea, in port towns, they’d all seemed to believe Poseidon was some perfect being, above reproach. Zolf knows better now, knows a computer built on death might well have achieved the same heights. There’s no such thing as gods, not really, only power and those with enough of it to inspire faith.

Zolf’s gaze flicks down to where briny calves and feet lie beneath the sheets. There is certainly nothing divine in _this_ , in a gift granted in recompense for destruction. 

He wishes, desperately, that they were tangible. That they were solid, something he could tear from his person and reject. He’d tried earlier, when the whiskey had given him an artificial courage rather than numbing despair, to wrench the water from his limbs. He’d cut off whatever connection held it to him with his hands, cupped his palms around the ragged stumps, but the water simply flowed around him, leaving nothing to grasp.

He can break everything, then, but this. He can beg for Poseidon to let go, to let him fall through darkness until he lands, crumbled and broken but _unbowed_ , at the bottom, until his lungs give out, until there is nothing left within him, and still Poseidon clings to him. He has only the barest illusion of control over his own body, has no say in any of it, all because he’d once thrown himself at the mercy of a mercurial creature calling itself a god.

It seems like all Zolf has anymore is regrets.

Zolf rolls onto his side and stares at the window set in the far wall, as if the change of scenery can quiet the maelstrom within him. Beyond the window’s shabby curtain, he knows, lies a dirty alley, the adjacent building, perhaps the wan glow of the street lamps or a tiny fragment of the night sky. The sky had brought him such comfort once, that inky expanse, diamond-studded and boundless. He’d learned the stars at sea, landmarks to guide his way.

If he leaves this room, if he stands in the middle of the street and cranes his neck to face the sky, there will be no stars to name. The sky will be washed nearly day-bright by the city lights, hidden by the floating university above. Whatever manages to stand bright enough to outshine the city will drown in the heavy clouds that have followed him here from Paris. There are no stars to see and no comfort to take from them, not anymore.

Perhaps it’s for the best.


End file.
